Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Sunday 19 March 2023

FA Cup (QF)

Brighton & Hove Albion 5 Undav(6), Ferguson(52,70) March(82) Waterfall(90 og)

Grimsby Town 0

Attendance: 29,415 (4,621 away fans)

On the pitch Crocombe deserves plaudits for keeping the score down, but the stars on 45 were Mighty and the mascots, roared on and roasting that podgy bird's backside in the half-time challenge.

Humble Hurst kept his shape as Town took a televised tumble. He didn't grumble, he gave a little whistle whilst looking towards the brighter side of our new life:

"I know it's a defeat and quite a heavy defeat. It's a test and it's about learning, seeing the quality they have…It would just have been nice to have kept it at four, that seems better than five."

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Zerbidee looked down upon his kingdom and did not a like what he could see. He descended from the heavens, he spoke, they listened, we lost:

"I spoke with them to play with more passion, more attitude and be stronger. We have to decide whether we want to go to Wembley to win or as a tourist."

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It had to come, we knew it all along, but our world don't look the same, our history has been changed. Town were simply overrun by a superb side, individually, collectively stratospherically superior in every way.

It wasn't pretty in pink but each one did their best, their individual imperfections laid bare live and exclusive on BBC1. And their best just kept the score down. Yes, there is no disgrace in Brighton hitting a par five on the long sixth dog leg with water hazard.

It would be particularly cruel and churlish to pick apart individuals. The truth, the hard truth, is that Town are a mid-table fourth division team and Brighton are one of the best teams in England. They played sufficiently near their peak collectively and individually to render anything Town did irrelevant.

Why don't we just take a bow for the new Town revolution, smile and grin at the change all around. Let’s remember how we got here, not how we left.

A football club and a football team as it should be, that sweet spot meeting point of capitalism and community.

We knew them once. We used to play in the same streets, wear the same clothes, eat the same stale food. Then they went to college and married into money. They haven't lost touch with their roots, they do remember who they were. But their past is a different country, they do things differently now.

And how. Wow.

Estimable, exemplary, excellent. The mini-Man-City, Zerbidee's Zorros, gave Town full and total respect, hammering away to the very last seconds without showboating or slacking. So swift of foot and mind and impossible for fourth tier mid-table mumblers and stumblers to manage. Where do we start, what's the point? It is what it is.

Bigger, faster, stronger, better. We truly are in the gutter looking at the stars.

Their inflatable seagulls are rubbish though.

When you're feeling in the dumps, don't be silly chumps. Wave your haddock in the air and thumb your nose at high society.

Mr J Gillett

Is he really the best a ref can get? Who can possibly say, for the jaunty Jared had nothing to do as the carnival floats drifted by the tourists from Town who stood beside the roadside cheerily waving and drowning. Ah, but the voices in his head, there's a thing. Them's the breaks, VARs the blows, roundabouts do swing both ways. Like Dennis Law.

The man in black walked the line between anonymous and invisible: 7.555

One more time now. Say it loud, we're black and white and we're proud.

In a word: exposure